from the punderful dept

In the realm of the alcohol industry, the French champagne makers have distinguished themselves for their jealous protection of the name of their sparkling white wine. This protectionism is taken to the extreme, with association groups representing champagne makers essentially forbidding anyone else from even using the term. France's neighbor, Italy, has its own sparkling white wine called prosecco. And it seems that the makers of prosecco are trying to take a page from their champagne-making cousins in "protecting" their trademarks to a ridiculous degree.

A maker of drinks for pets recently tried to trademark the name of a product it makes called "Pawsecco." The pet treat is not alcoholic, is sold only to pet owners, and is, frankly, puntastic. Despite all of this being supremely obvious, Woof and Brew faced a trademark opposition from the prosecco people.

‘Pawsecco’ was opposed by Consorzio di Tutela della Denominazione di Origine Controllata Prosecco, the Italian organisation responsible for the protection and promotion of Prosecco’s PDO. The PDO relates to wines deriving from a particular vine species, within specific grape-growing areas in Italy. For a wine to qualify as Prosecco there are also unique bottling and labelling requirements.

Consorzio said the applied-for mark would be confused with its earlier registered EU trademark (EUTM), which features the words ‘Prosecco PDO’ in a circle around the silhouette of glasses (EUTM number 11,619,764).

Okay, a couple of things here. First, the claims of potential confusion are clearly ridiculous. The products in question are not remotely similar, save for a tongue-in-cheek pun-based name Woof and Brew devised for its product. Even that pun is of the kind that clearly identifies the product differences and comes as part of a long-running tradition of pet stores punning known brands in selling their pet equivalents. Any clear reading of this opposition leaves the reader thinking that it is absolutely absurd.

Second, is this really the best look for a trade group representing prosecco makers? After all, embedded in the opposition is that its products, billed as a classy, high-quality sparkling wine, could be confused with something pet owners feed to their dogs. Is that really the claim the consortium wants to make?

Amazingly, despite all of this, Team Prosecco actually won its opposition. After admitting in its ruling that there is no chance for public confusion over any of this, the UK IPO then decided that the very allusion to prosecco warranted a refusal of the "Pawsecco" mark.

It agreed with Consorzio’s assertion that the ‘Pawsecco’ mark was “coined in order to allude to a type of wine”, though the IPO noted that “it is highly unlikely that pet owners would assume that the product was actually wine”.

Overall, “the nature of the whole marketing strategy appears predicated upon an assumption that the potential consumer will see the evocation,” the IPO said, adding it is an “inevitable conclusion” that Woof and Brew saw “some form of commercial benefit in choosing (and using) the name that it did”. Woof and Brew is therefore “taking advantage of the strong reputation possessed by the PDO, riding on its coat-tails”, and to “tolerate such use would not promote fair competition”, the IPO concluded.

And so Woof and Brew doesn't get its trademark and has to pay the consortium nearly $3,000 for costs incurred in opposing the trademark. All for a trademark conflict that the IPO itself admits contains no risk for confusing the public consumer.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Man's best friend, the dog, has a mysterious and complex relationship with people. Ancient humans presumably domesticated wolves or some other closely related species a long time ago -- perhaps multiple times on different continents. The story of dogs and wolves and people is far from over, getting ever more interesting as we learn more about ancient dog specimens and create more genetically-engineered dogs.

from the wrong-on-both-counts dept

A Dallas pet-sitting company had a small problem. HAD. But it approached it badly and now it has a much larger one.

It tried to enforce a "non-disparagement" clause to silence an unhappy customer. Copied nearly word-for-word from what is now known as "KlearGear boilerplate," the clause forbade customers from uttering a discouraging word under pain of whatever Prestigious Pets might come up with (including wholly made-up damages on top of legal fees, etc.), and awarded itself "sole discretion" to determine what words/actions would trigger the clause.

An unhappy couple posted a review to Yelp with some mild criticisms of the company -- the worst of it being that the "independent contractor" the company provided had not taken care of the customer's fish particularly well and that Prestigious Pets was difficult to get ahold of.

First, the company's legal rep sent a letter to the customers disputing every claim made in the Yelp review and informing them that their refusal to discuss the issues with Prestigious Pets "violated the spirit" of its bogus non-disparagement clause.

Then it filed a claim for $6,766 against the couple in small claims court, listing everything from "lost work opportunities" to "libelous and slandurous [sic] harm" to violation of the non-disparagement clause. This action produced completely predictable results. The couple aired their grievances even more publicly as the story of Prestigious Pets' clause and retaliatory legal actions began to make its way from local news stations to nationally-read websites.

The couple retained counsel to file an anti-SLAPP motion against the company's claims. But Prestigious Pets, stung by the backlash to its attempted enforcement of its clause, withdrew its small claims court filing (instantly mooting the anti-SLAPP motion) and filed a million dollar lawsuit instead.

The company claims that the relief in its new lawsuit is justified because its business dried up in the face of the publicity about its lawsuit, and it brought new claims against Robert Duchouquette because he had appeared in media interviews where he objected to having been sued in the first place. But at this point, the Duchouquettes were not only defendants in a lawsuit for a potentially bankrupting amount of damages, but they had to consider the significant up-front expense of having to pay their lawyers for the hourly expense of defending themselves against a SLAPP suit – the small claims suit alone had subjected them to a ten thousand dollar legal bill.

The statement made by the Duchouquettes that seems to most offend the pet sitting company deals with simple facts. The allegations by Prestigious Pets contain phrases never used by the Duchouquettes ("[T]he Duchouquettes have made it an ongoing campaign to tell the world that Prestigious Pets and Kalle almost killed their fish or at least potentially harmed it (without any evidence to support such a claim)...") and indisputable facts: there was excess food on the bottom of the aquarium, the water was cloudy, and overfeeding is almost always bad for fish, no matter what breed.

The couple's motion to dismiss [PDF] attacks Prestigious Pets' use of a non-disparagement clause that gives the company the "right" to severely limit its customers' speech.

Prestigious Pets’ standard contract—which includes a non-disparagement clause—is shockingly one-sided. It strips consumers of their fundamental rights of free speech, arguably going so far as to even bar consumer actions protected by law such as filing a lawsuit in response to egregious wrongdoing by the company. It provides for the recovery of attorneys’ fees—only against the consumer. It sets Prestigious Pets up as the sole judge and jury to determine whether the non-disparagement clause has been violated. Perhaps worst of all, the contract even goes beyond simply barring speech that injures Prestigious Pets, and actually seeks to bar “any action” that in any way—in Prestigious Pets’ sole estimation—harms the company.

What's really bizarre about this entire debacle is that Prestigious Pets tried to distance itself from this non-disparagement clause by claiming it was inserted by "professionals" who assisted with crafting the company's service agreement. This bizarre post-blowup stiffarm attempts to imply the company is somehow blameless, if not entirely powerless to halt the events set in motion by a service agreement the company apparently had no direct input in compiling. Having such a clause in a service agreement is just stupid. Trying to enforce it to shut up critics is suicide. And, as is noted by Levy, Prestigious Pets has already tried to use the clause against another unhappy customer.

There appears to be almost no chance this lawsuit will survive a motion to dismiss. But if anyone's going to learn what needs to be learned from this experience, the anti-SLAPP motion will also need to be granted, along with a fee shift that compensates these customers for enduring a particularly inept defamation suit.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're not a dog or cat person, maybe you prefer fish or some other pet that doesn't require too much attention. If vertebrates -- or even invertebrates -- are too evolved for your liking, some folks have come up with a few jellyfish aquariums that might suit your tastes. You still need to take care of these creatures, and they're not immortal (unless your name is Shin Kubota), unfortunately.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Dogs are often referred to as man's best friend, but it's not certain how this relationship developed in the first place. Did early humans purposefully domesticate dogs from their wild ancestors, or did we just stumble upon nearly tame dogs and develop a bond? Experiments such as the domesticated fox demonstrate that it's not too hard to tame certain animals in a relatively short period of time. Perhaps we're on the cusp of even more advanced domestication techniques, and hyper-intelligent parrots are just around the corner. GMO pets could be our next best friends.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Animal behavior is getting more and more attention as researchers discover that our animal friends exhibit emotional responses seemingly similar to ours. It's hard to "prove" animals experience complex emotions or thoughts (in fact, you never prove anything in science... you can only disprove things), but mounting evidence seems to suggest that many animals have reactions that we might predict based on our own psychological knowledge. Here are just a few interesting studies on animals acting like us somehow.

from the well,-maybe-they-do dept

For this week's awesome stuff of interesting or bizarre crowdfunding projects, we're going to go with three crowdfunding projects involving technology for pets. Yes, pets. I've got a cat and a dog and a bunch of fish, and I've never once thought about buying any special technology (beyond basic fish tank stuff) for them, but apparently others like to go a little bit further.

My fish don't seem to do much besides swim around, eat and die all too frequently, but perhaps it's because I'd never thought to give them something fun to do like Fish on Wheels. Yes, fish on wheels. It's basically what it says on the label. A fish-tank with wheels and some computer vision technology to move the vehicle in the direction the fish swims. Bizarrely, they don't have a "campaign video" but rather they do have this YouTube video from a few months ago that has over a million views and had me laughing outloud multiple times, as you watch the fish drive the vehicle.

The video above released back in February just for fun, basically, to demonstrate how you can do cool things with computer vision technology. But, as you can see from the million-plus views, it went kind of viral, and the folks who made it decided to Kickstart it to see if they could actually turn it into a product. The full thing will run you between €199 and €249 depending on how early you are. I'm not sure it'll actually reach its goal. As I type this it's still at just under €5,000, with a target of €40,000, with about three and a half weeks to go. As awesome as the video above is, I'm not entirely sure how I'd feel about having this thing roaming around my house.

How about a gaming console for your dog? That's what CleverPet is trying to do. Actually, it's a WiFi-connected automatic feeder, but with the idea of "challenging" your dog to do certain things to keep it entertained or something. There's a lot of talk about how your dog needs more intellectual stimulation or something. My dog seems to prefer being slumped over in the corner, so I'm not sure about that, but perhaps other dogs are jealous of you and your Xbox.

The video and project page are clear and professional. The actual device runs between $129 and $199 depending on how early an early bird you might be. The project seems to have a decent chance of getting funded, having already hit about 30% of its $100,000 goal in just a couple days.

If you just want a full-featured Wi-Fi connected pet feeder without the whole "gaming console" stuff, perhaps the PetPal is a better option. This thing includes a camera and a speaker so you can watch and communicate with your pet as you feed them from far away. It's an interesting project, but man, the people putting it together should have sought some help in creating both their video and the pitch. The video is way too long (and spends too much time on other stuff before getting to the point) and the pitch itself also focuses too much on the backstory rather than the product.

These are also a lot more expensive than the CleverPet too. To actually get a PetPal you have to spend between $350 and $395. All in all, this project isn't gaining much traction. Nearly a month in with still nearly a month to go (also: leaving a project open too long tends to be a bad idea), they're only at around $12,000 reached, well below their goal of $150,000.

from the bad-airline!--bad! dept

As the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a Streisand effect. Wait, no, that's not right, but the point is that attempts at silencing speech resulting in an explosion of that speech are quite varied. From railing against parody Twitter accounts, to attempts to silence negative online reviews, to professional sports leagues trying to keep documentaries from going live, it seems we all have something to learn from Senorita Streisand and her icy wrath.

But few such lessons include puppies, such as this one that reader IAsimov alerts us to, in which United Airlines nearly killed an owner's beloved dog and agreed to pay her vet bills, but only if she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Janet Sinclair brought her pets, Sedona the greyhound and Alika the cat, on a cross-country trip using UA's "PetSafe" program, which makes several promises about how the animals will be treated and what type of conditions they'll be exposed to. It would appear, to put it mildly, that the airline failed to keep their promises.

But, according to Sinclair, her pets were not safe. In fact, she says, the comfort stop nearly killed them. As she sat in her window seat looking out onto the tarmac of George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Sinclair says she saw a cargo employee kick Sedona’s crate six times to shove it under the shade of the plane’s wing instead of gently moving it there.

Urged by a fellow passenger, Sinclair began documenting what was happening to her animals. The video she recorded periodically shows her pets left outside, not in a temperature-controlled vehicle. According to the National Weather Service, the high in Houston that day was 94 degrees. When they touched down in Boston, Sinclair said her dog was barely alive.

"Sedona’s entire crate was filled with blood, feces, urine," Sinclair said. "Sedona was in full heat stroke. All of the blankets were filled with blood. She was urinating and defecating blood. She was dying, literally, right in front of me."

Sedona, fortunately, did not die, and the dog was taken to a vet, who was able to bring the dog back to health. The bill for the vet's work was $2,700, for three days in intensive care to treat heat stroke. Her vet was quite clear in stating that the condition of the dog was not due to any preexisting conditions, despite what United Airlines originally claimed, and was solely the result of the dog's treatment during the flight. The airline offered to pay the bill...but only if Sinclair agreed not to tell anyone what good dog-killers they are. Sinclair declined.

"The only reason I’m doing this interview is because I didn’t sign that, and I won’t sign it," she said, referring to the nondisclosure agreement. "I still want to be reimbursed," she said. "But I’m not going to be quiet."

And now the story is going viral, because the combination of a massive company behaving this way and the inclusion of a dog suffering horrible conditions is the kind of thing internet outrage was made for. My guess? You will still have turkey leftovers in your fridge when UA agrees to pay the vet bill without an NDA. Too bad the damage will have already been done.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People with pets sometimes go a bit overboard when it comes to spoiling their animals. There's nothing really wrong with that, but non-pet people might question how the treatment of animals can trump the treatment of people. Here are just a few pet-related stories to ponder.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years, and there's been some speculation that humans and dogs have co-evolved to some extent. So it would be nice to understand our domesticated friends a bit better, and technology could help us out. We've seen products like Bowlingual for translating dog barks into human languages, and here are just a few more interesting links on human-dog relationships.